Espionage: The Greatest Spy Operations of the 20th Century

Espionage expert Ernest Volkman goes behind the scenes of 20th-century history to uncover twenty-three incredible capers, con games, and subterfuges. Here are just a few:

-Windows shattered in Manhattan, shrapnel struck the Statue of Liberty, and the Brooklyn Bridge swayed when, in July of 1916, German saboteurs blew up the huge Black Tom munitions dump near Bayonne, New Jersey.

-The spectacular explosion galvanized public opinion against Germany and helped bring the United States into World War I. Japan's seizure of the Mandate Islands in the central Pacific triggered U.S. covert activities. Could the secret of Amelia Earhart's tragic final flight be connected to America's pre-war jitters?

-In the early 1920s, to ensure the survival of the fledgling Soviet state, Lenin used his personal intelligence service, CHEKA, to control anti-Bolshevik resistance. Enemies of the revolution were lured to their destruction through the ironically named Trust Operation.

-How were the Allies able to counter Hitler's deadliest weapons? For six years a mole inside Nazi Germany's scientific establishment betrayed the secrets of his country's classified military research to Britain's MI6.